For It Is Man's Number: sofie gråbøl

Showing posts with label sofie gråbøl. Show all posts

Saturday, 18 May 2024

Shudder Saturday: Nightwatch (1994)

I remember Nightwatch being quite highly praised when it was released. A Danish thriller from writer-director Ole Bornedal, it was a film that I soon felt I had to see. So I did. I saw it many years ago, and I saw the 1997 remake (also directed by Bornedal, but with Ewan McGregor in the lead role). I remember quite enjoying both versions of the tale, but nothing remained in my memory decades later. Rewatching this film now, it's understandable.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays a law student named Martin. Martin gets a job as a night watchman as the Forensic Medical Institute, where one of his main duties is checking on the morgue. That morgue is about to gain a number of new residents as a serial killer stalks the streets of Copenhagen, but that doesn't really bother Martin, who is often busy distracting himself with an escalating game of dares that he and his friend, Jens (Kim Bodnia), are engaged in. It does start to bother him, however, when strange things start happening in the morgue, and when the victims of the killer start to show evidence that could incriminate Martin.

Although it's a decent enough little thriller, arguably a little more macabre than most, it's hard to watch Nightwatch nowadays and figure out how it gained such a solid reputation when it was first released. No one element disappoints, and the casting is a big plus, but it feels as if it's a slim, and surprisingly dull, plot padded around a couple of decent set-pieces. The grand finale is decent, and finally adds some genuine tension, but it also seems a bit ridiculous (even in relation to other slick thrillers in this vein).

Coster-Waldau makes for an appealing lead, and Bodnia is a lot of fun as the friend who keeps getting him in trouble with escalating dares and pranks, but I wish the likes of Sofie Gråbøl, Lotte Anderson, and Ulf Pilgaard had been given better material to work with, especially when two of those people are much more heavily involved in the third act. Rikke Louise Andersson is a highlight, in the role of Joyce, but her involvement with the two leading men feels like it could have been spun off into a very different, and potentially more interesting, movie.

Don't get me wrong though, I certainly didn't hate this. It's a decent and dark thriller. It's just a film that always seems to pick the least interesting direction when so many scenes provide a crossroads for the narrative. Maybe I had my viewing experience this time around impacted by that first viewing many years ago, but I wasn't ever fully invested in the characters, I didn't sense any ambiguity when it came to the potential killer, and it really dropped the ball when it came to delivering on the potential of the central premise.

Good, but not great, and I'm surprised to find that it has maintained enough of a legacy that we now, three decades later, have a sequel, also written and directed by Bornedal. I guess you already know what I will be watching at this time next week though.

6/10

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Saturday, 30 December 2023

Shudder Saturday: Attachment (2022)

Some people are fortunate enough to go through their lives in a state of blissful harmony. They have a great relationship with their family members, and there's a smooth transition later in life when they forge a strong connection with someone they fall in love with. Those people are very rare though. You can call me cynical if you like, but I would estimate that those people are actually so rare that you should buy yourself a lottery ticket on the day you meet any one of them. Attachment looks at someone in a more common situation, struggling to maintain a close, sometimes claustrophobic, relation with their mother as they develop a relationship with someone they have quickly developed a strong bond with.

Ellie Kendrick is the woman at the heart of this triangle. She plays Leah, a Jewish academic living in London, her own home situated one floor above the home of her mother (Chana, played by Sofie Gråbøl). Josephine Park is Maja, a Danish woman who inadvertently comes between the two. Having started a relationship with Leah without knowing too much about her, Maja quickly tries to learn more after Leah hurts herself during a seizure. Trying to navigate the mother-daughter relationship she has walked in on, as well as learning enough about Judaism to avoid any embarrassing errors, Maja soon starts to suspect that there's more for her to be worried about than the usual pitfalls of meeting your partner's family.

Writer-director Gabriel Bier Gislason is actually both Danish and Jewish himself (from what I could glean while seeking out some more information about him online anyway), which makes his feature debut a fairly logical move after his work elsewhere, working as either a translator or helming a couple of his own short films. Attachment feels both familiar and a step removed from the everyday, which proves how well Gislason does at conveying that sense of someone wandering into a world they are unfamiliar with, be it another country or the trappings of another religion. It would be easy to assume that Gislason has crafted this from his own experiences, but maybe he just has a good empathy for people who end up trying to understand something nuanced and complex from a position of relative distance and ignorance.

Although Kendrick is very good in her role, she has arguably the lightest workload. It's Park and Gråbøl carrying most of the weight, showing their own struggles and their strain as they try to find a way to get along with one another. Park is easy to root for, and Gråbøl plays her character in a way that allows viewers to know that her cold and harsh behaviour seems to stem from a place of good intentions. David Dencik plays Lev, someone who can both deliver the required exposition and also play a prominent part in the third act, when things start to become clearer for the two women trying to maintain a steady orbit around Leah.

There are some familiar elements used here, and those familiar with any Jewish mythology should know where it's all heading from very early on, but Gislason doesn't bother trying to fool viewers, nor does he add too much to distract from the tension that keeps moving between Maja and Chana like static electricity. You don't get a load of bells and whistles, but you do get a consistently clear and pleasing visual flow from cinematographer Valdemar Winge Leisner, a very good score from Johan Carøe, and the strength of the lead performances from people who know that the layered material will satisfy those who are happy to be patient with something enjoyably different from numerous other riffs on this kind of thing.

7/10